Philosophy & Religious Studies

Peter van Inwagen, the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and Research Professor of Philosophy at Duke University will present "Evil and the Existence of God." In the lecture, van Inwagen will respond to the argument that evil and an omnipotent, morally perfect God cannot co-exist. Van Inwagen is one of the most influential philosophers in metaphysics and is the author of An Essay on Free Will; Material Beings; Metaphysics; God, Knowledge, and Mystery; Ontology, Identity, and Modality; The Problem of Evil; Existence: Essays in Ontology; and the forthcoming Thinking about Free Will. He is also the author of about 150 published articles.

Previously, he has delivered the Maurice Lectures at King's College, London, the Wilde Lectures at Oxford University, the Jellema Lectures at Calvin College, the Stewart Lectures at Princeton University, and the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews. He was President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, 2008-2009, and President of the Society of Christian Philosophers from 2010 to 2013.

Past Events

The 29th Annual Mary Olive Woods Lecture

J. Kameron Carter, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School will present “Bonhoeffer’s (and Our) Postracial Blues.” Carter describes the theme of the project: "Race is changing. Our engagement with it is changing. One of the new key cultural terms of this transformation is this notion of post racialism, and I am very interested in how this post racialism actually becomes a new form of racism and how theological and religious thought forms are a part of the processes of race.”